Caroline Crusher hadn't laid eyes upon Jean-Luc Picard for four years.
Watching him now from the kitchen, Wesley on his lap, she realised that he'd lost his hair somewhere between the wedding and the wake.
He looked better for it.
The captain had been so moody at the wedding.
Oh, he'd tried so very hard not to be, taking his duties as best man as seriously as he did anything else vaguely associated with duty.
But Caroline had known that that was exactly how he saw his role. When he'd finally beckoned the groom's mother to the dance floor, the cold formality had surprised her. She'd swatted his chest anyway and laughingly took his hand.
From the day Jack first brought the young Starfleet captain home, she'd known that he he was good for her son, known that he loved him.
Known that he would be a fixture in her life from there on in, even though he seemed to have deliberately gone out of his way to alienate her.
So formal, so rigid. The responsibilities of captaincy lain upon the shoulders of such a young man had seen to that.
Making small talk with him was almost impossible; he just didn't do it. In time, they had managed somehow to make a connection, her natural naughtiness and his quick wit finally meshing.
On their fifth visit, Caroline watched from the kitchen as her son brushed his fingers gently across Jean-Luc's chin.
And yet after all these years, she'd never managed to convince him to address her as anything else but "Mrs Crusher."
"Don't be jealous of Beverly, Jean-Luc," she'd whispered in his ear, their hands entwined as they danced at her son's wedding.
Jean-Luc Picard was going to bury his best friend tomorrow and yet he couldn't rid himself of his dreams' lingering suggestion that this was what he had always wanted.
Screwing his eyes shut, the real and imagined wouldn't let him be; smoothing Jack's hair back from his brow, fingers bruising Jack's raised hip, Beverly arching as his hands forced her legs apart; last weekend's debauchery with Phillipa Louvois.
He'd wanted Beverly from the moment Walker had first introduced them, but it shocked him that even now, with his best friend lying dead in the next room, he very much still wanted her and that this want crawled at his innards, this craving for her, widow's garb and all.
Jean-Luc felt the bile of self-disgust rise to his throat as the chubby fingers of Jack's young son clutched at the thigh of his dress uniform beckoning to heave himself up. He swallowed hard against the natural gag reflex and forced it all back deep inside.
Walker was speaking quietly with Beverly at the foot of the stairs. She turned briefly to warm Jean-Luc with a soft sad smile and he returned it as best he could as he shifted to better accommodate Wesley.
Commander Walker Keel watched Picard balancing Wesley on his lap as awkwardly and fearful as his Aunt Nancy did with the family's Persian cat, albeit with better grace.
Sharing his light-hearted impression with Beverly, he briefly met Caroline's gaze.
"He's not going to stay, is he, Walker?" Beverly said, giving voice to what they both already knew.
"He thinks that I blame him, you know."
Walker sucked in his breath before responding: "You do blame him Beverly."
She recoiled slightly, not enough to lose balance, but enough for him to place a steadying hand on her elbow.
Jack's mother watched from the kitchen as Wesley leaned his little self against Picard's chest, raising his arm back to touch the insignia bars on the captain's shoulder, smoothing them over and over with his dimpled fingers, chatting all the while.